Biography

American spy, the son of a former FBI agent who had an affluent upbringing and an IQ tested at 142. Boyce had a job at a top secret CIA code room, where he had access to America's most sensitive satellite system's documents. In 1975-1976, he stole and sold information to Russian agents in Mexico along with his pal, Dalton Lee. Arrested in Riverside, CA on 1/16/1977, he went to trial in April 1977 and was given a prison term of 40 years.

Boyce hated prison, and escaped from Lompoc Federal Prison on 1/21/1980. To survive, he hid out, robbing banks. After one of the country's greatest manhunts, led by chief deputy U.S. marshal Larry Homesick, he was captured 19 months later, on 8/21/1981, in Port Angelus, Washington and given an extra 28 years in a Minnesota prison.

Boyce was called "the Falcon" for his hobby of hunting with his birds, with which he identified for their wild freedom. His story was told by Robert Lindsay in "The Falcon and the Snowman."

In 1982, while at Leavenworth, he was beaten by the prison's Aryan Brotherhood gang after telling Australian TV that espionage was "high adventure" and that he had "no problem with the label "traitor." He was moved to maximum security in Marion where he lived in solitary confinement at the end of a corridor underneath the prison hospital, a dismal sequence of days that consisted of cockroaches, ants and flies for the next six years. Every day was a repeat of the previous and he wrote that he felt "submerged, alone, in a submarine." He rescued himself with books, devouring histories. In the fourth year he rediscovered falconry and he bought 60 books on the sport.

In 1985, he testified before a Senate panel looking for ways to prevent future Christopher Boyces, and he worked with the FBI to produce Army recruit programs on the dangers of espionage. In 1988 he was moved to the state lock-up at Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, which was paid $98 a day to house him.

He took courses in art and history and earned a B.A., consistently getting A's and earning the praise of his instructors. He began work on his master's. In March 1997, Boyce broke down in tears at his review board under the weight of so much of life's time lost. Sentenced to be in prison until 2046, by late 1998 Boyce showed himself such a model prisoner that he was scheduled to enter a halfway house in September 2002 with full release by March 2003. Heartened and invigorated, he continued to write for the Minneapolis newspaper with many pieces addressing prison reform.